Retirement isn’t as simple as walking away—it requires careful planning, precise timing, and transparent communication.
You may be asking yourself: When is the right time to close my practice? How can I prepare my clients for this inevitable transition? Will ending their therapy mid-process cause harm? And how do I cope with my own anxiety, guilt, and overwhelming concerns about letting go?
Whether your ending is planned or unplanned, therapists are bound by strict ethical codes that prohibit abandoning clients. For therapists in leadership roles—managing group practices, clinics, or agencies—the complexity deepens with the added responsibility of those they lead.
To close their caseloads, therapists must be prepared to navigate the full range of client emotions and understand the impact of loosening the vital attachment bonds that underpin successful therapy—both for themselves and their clients. This is a complex clinical challenge, requiring an advanced comprehension of the attachment issues that get triggered during a forced ending, and one that most therapists are unprepared for.
Until now, the clinical steps and skills for letting go of an entire caseload have been largely unexplored and rarely discussed.
This unique workshop equips therapists with the knowledge, case examples, and support necessary to plan for the end of their work with compassion, care, and integrity.
Objectives
Outline
Retiring Well: Therapist Readiness, Decision Points, and Planning
• Distinguishing between planned and unplanned retirements
• Navigating ambivalence: Understanding the push and pull factors around the decision to retire
• The Four-Stage Model of Readiness to Retire
• Preparing for the emotional and logistical complexity of ending a helping profession
• Releasing professional identity and developing a renewed sense of self
Clinical Implications of Retirement: An Attachment-Centered Approach
• Understanding how client attachment styles influence responses to therapy closure
• Best practices to prevent client regression and avoid abandonment
• Integrating the ending of treatment into ongoing therapeutic goals and treatment planning
• Maintaining secure attachment during the final phase of therapy
• Managing transference and countertransference during the transition
Ethical Issues for a Compassionate Ending of Therapy
• Ethical and effective communication with clients, including appropriate use of self-disclosure
• Key ethical responsibilities when concluding a caseload
• Understanding and preparing a professional will: components and importance
• Tools for healthy closure, including therapist self-awareness and emotional regulation
• Final tasks: consolidating gains, providing referrals, managing crises, and saying goodbye
• Reflecting on your professional impact: A Legacy Exercise
Target Audience